Sandi Ford checked her watch: Seven-twenty. She had hoped the Holloway family would show up earlier instead of later, but apparently not. No sense wasting time, not when she could be doing something productive while waiting on her potential students and their parents. A new shipment of costumes had come in this afternoon, right in the middle of her four-to-five-year-olds’ ballet class. The postal carrier had, as she always did, simply left the boxes on the floor just inside the front door. The spring recital was only a few weeks away, so the sooner she unpacked the costumes, fitted them to each child, and allowed time for alterations the better off she’d be. This past year she’d waited until the last minute and wound up paying for an overnight delivery.
After cutting off all the lights except the one florescent in the middle of the ceiling that she left burning twenty-four-seven, Sandi went to the front of the store and inspected today’s shipment. Just as she picked up the first of five large but not heavy boxes, she heard a strange noise that sent shivers up her spine.
What was that?
Clutching the box to her chest, she stopped dead still and listened.
Quiet.
It wasn’t the first time when she’d been here alone at the studio that she’d heard odd sounds. After all, this was an old building, built around 1910, and old buildings had a way of creaking and moaning. Old wooden floors and rafters. Ancient water pipes. The wind whistling down the two chimneys. Former owners had closed off the two fireplaces, one downstairs and the other upstairs, but when she and Earl Ray had renovated the place and turned it into a dance studio, they had reopened both fireplaces.
Ignoring her nervous reaction to the noise, she carried the box to the storeroom at the back of the studio, turned on an overhead light, and set the box on a long wooden table. Then one by one, she brought the other four boxes to the storeroom, lining them up on the table.
She had a couple of box cutters around here somewhere. Think, Sandi. Oh, yes, they were in the Lost-and-Found box on the top shelf of one of the molded plastic Dollar Store bookcases she used to keep miscellaneous items. Knowing she couldn’t reach the top shelf, she shoved one of the two folding chairs at the table over to the bookcase and climbed up on the chair seat. Even then, she had to stand on tiptoe to reach the box.
Why on earth had she put it up so high?
To keep little hands from being able to reach it, that’s why.
Just as she managed to grab hold of the box’s edge, a male voice inexplicably said, “Need some help?”
She practically jumped out of her skin. Gasping, her hands shaking, she dropped the box, which fell to the floor with a whopping flop.
Sandi stared at the man who had somehow made his way into the doorway. Medium height, a bit on the stocky side. Brown hair and eyes. Dressed in dark blue work clothes, the kind maintenance employees and mechanics often wore.
“Ma’am, I’m sure sorry I scared you.” He smiled warmly. “Are you all right?”
Sandi swallowed her initial uncertainty. “Are you Mr. Holloway?”
“Sure am. I’m running a bit late. I apologize.”
When Sandi started to climb down off the chair, Donald Holloway rushed over and offered his assistance. She braced her hand on his arm and stepped down, then turned to him and held out her hand. They exchanged a cordial shake.
“Where’s your wife and daughters?” she asked.
“The girls are out in the car,” he said. “I’m afraid Missy couldn’t make it. She had to work an extra shift over at the packing plant.”
“Oh, I see.” There’s no reason to be nervous just because you’re alone in the back storeroom with a man you don’t know. He’s a husband and father. He has a pleasant smile and a friendly attitude. “Well, why don’t we go out into the studio. I have a brochure you can take to show your wife. Those and the application forms are in my desk up front.”
When he turned toward the door, Sandi breathed a sigh of relief.
But he didn’t walk through the open door. Instead he closed it and turned back around to face Sandi.
“What are you doing?” she asked, then realized how stupid her question had sounded. She marched toward him, deter mination in her walk. “Please, open the door, Mr. Holloway.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Sandi.”
His smile altered. No longer a good-old-boy grin similar to Earl Ray’s and her daddy’s and most of the men in Parsons, but a sinister smirk.
Oh, God, she was in trouble!
Sandi’s heartbeat accelerated. Real fear radiated through her, prompting her body to send out a distress signal.
When Donald Holloway moved toward her, she eased backward very slowly. There was a back entrance to the building, just a few feet behind her. The heavy wooden door opened up into the alley, but she kept it locked. Damn it, her keys were in her purse, on her desk, in the studio, along with her cell phone and her can of pepper spray.
Damn! Damn!
This can’t be happening.
“I’m glad you made it so easy for me,” Mr. Holloway said. “I had wondered if there was a backroom where we could be alone.”
With a rush of adrenaline surging through her, Sandi tried to remember the basic self-protection tactics she’d seen on television. Go for the eyes. Go for the groin. Try to break the guy’s nose. Any of those would mean getting up close, which she really didn’t want to do. But it was going to happen. He was going to rape her unless she found a way to stop him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he told her. “You’re thinking of ways to fight me, hoping you can escape.” His eyes narrowed into evil slits, his mouth twisting into a snarl. “The harder you fight, the worse it will be for you.”
“Don’t do this. Please.”
“Ah, Sandi, Sandi.” He moved slowly toward her. Not rushing. As if he had all the time in the world. “Don’t you understand. I have to. You’re worth twenty points and I really need those points if I’m going to win.”
Puzzled by what he said, she stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
He reached out and grasped a lock of her chin-length hair. Cringing, she tried to pull away, but he yanked on her hair. She yelped.
“You’re a redhead. Such beautiful auburn hair. That makes you worth twenty points.”
“Are you playing some sort of sick game?”
When Donald Holloway laughed, the sound sliced through her like razor blades.
Their gazes locked in combat. Sandi decided right then and there that she was not going down without a fight. The fight of her life.
When he manacled his meaty hand behind her neck, she stood on tiptoe and head-butted him. Hollering in pain, he released her immediately. She slid around him and headed for the door.
“You’ll pay for that, bitch!” Just as she clasped the doorknob, he grabbed her by her hair. Yanking her backward, he dragged her across the room and slammed her into the wall. Her face hit the old plaster wall with a resounding thud, and she knew instantly that her nose was broken. Blood gushed from her nostrils.
Suddenly, without warning, he jerked her around and covered her bloody face with a foul-smelling rag. Within seconds everything went black.
By the time Sandi came to, Pudge had arranged everything in the back storeroom to his satisfaction. He had also locked the front door to the studio. How long would he have before Sandi was missed, before her husband got worried about her and came by to check on her? Thirty minutes? Forty-five? No matter, this wouldn’t take long.
She opened her eyes. When she saw him standing over her, staring down at her where she lay on the wooden table, she let out an ear-piercing scream. Back here, so far away from the street, no one could hear her, even if there had been anyone on the sidewalk in front of the studio. But there wasn’t. All of Main Street, except for an occasional vehicle passing through, was empty. Dead as dead could be.
Pudge stroked her flushed cheeks. “Aren’t you the spunky little fighter.”
She tried to get up, but quickly discovered that she was spread-eagled on the table, her arms and hands bound so tightly they were quite immobile.
“Just go ahead and rape me,” she told him. “Or have you already—”
“Rape you? Don’t be silly. I have no intention of raping you.”
“Then what are you …” Realization dawned. She screamed again.
“No one can hear you,” he told her.
“Please, dear God, please don’t kill me. I have three children …”
Drowning out her pitiful pleas with thoughts of the shiny new axe he had brought with him when he’d entered the studio, Pudge visualized hacking off her lovely feet. He had stored the axe in a large box, wrapped with twine, and set it near the front entrance. At present, that effective chopping tool rested against the foot of the table.
He walked around the table to the end, reached out, and caressed first one of her feet and then the other. She squirmed and whimpered.
“Such pretty little feet. A ballerina’s feet.”
He lifted the axe. Sandi’s eyes widened in fear. She opened her mouth, but only a hoarse wail came out.
As he clutched the axe and lifted it up, positioning it for the first strike, an incredible sense of power shot through him, like an instant high from drugs, only stronger and sweeter. So much sweeter.
He could all but taste Sandi’s fear. The sound of her whimpers, her cries, her pleading gave him a hard-on. He brought the axe down across her right ankle. The sharp, heavy blade severed her foot from her calf.
Sandi screamed in pain.
Pudge lifted the bloodstained axe and repeated the pro cess, hacking off her left foot. Sandi screamed again. His muscles tensed. His nerve endings burned.
Pudge ejaculated.
As Sandi’s dying screams echoed in his ears, he shivered with release.
It didn’t happen all that often. He usually didn’t come when he killed a woman, only later, when he relived the moment looking at the photographs he always took at the scene.
Still clutching the blood-soaked axe, he stared at Sandi, who apparently had fainted from the pain. It wouldn’t take long for her to bleed to death.
Before he actually realized what he was doing, Pudge lifted the axe again and brought it down over Sandi’s left knee. It took three tries before he separated her calf from her thigh.
Excitement flooded through him. Then he took off her right calf at the knee.
God, what a feeling!
Laughing from the sheer joy of possessing such godlike power, Pudge brought the axe down repeatedly, hacking away, taking off Sandi’s hands and arms. Blood soaked the table and dripped down onto the floor. And Pudge kept laughing as he swung the axe over and over again.